1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for controlling intervention in the behavior of a submodule, where use is made of a device model for modeling and subsequent operation of an automation system, where device model comprises an input/output device, at least one first module, which in turn has at least one submodule, and a first controller, and where the device model and the first controller are provided with interconnection information that defines an assignment between the first controller and the at least one submodule.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modeling of a device model is particularly applied, for example, in the Profinet standard (International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61585/61784). In this standard, the controller and I/O device, where the I/O device corresponds to the input/output device, are specified as the device types.
According thereto, the device model for I/O devices consists of objects, i.e., I/O device modules and submodules. According to the Profinet specification, a submodule possesses the following interfaces: an I/O interface for cyclic data exchange, a data record interface for acyclic data exchange, and an alarm interface for event-driven data exchange. The Profinet specification provides that a submodule having interfaces is uniquely assigned to one controller. It is also permitted to distribute the submodules of an I/O device over a plurality of controllers. The assignment of submodules of one I/O device to a plurality of controllers is referred to as a “shared device” policy.
In shared devices, submodules are uniquely assigned to one controller and only one application of the controller can control the assigned submodules. An I/O management strategy, i.e., a rule governing how the inputs/outputs of an I/O device are to be controlled, is realized by the controllers.
If it is now desired to make use of an energy management solution, for example, Profi Energy (PE), referred to in the following as PE management, a further controller is deployed to handle the energy management for the I/O device. The intention is then for the PE management to be able to place the entire I/O device or parts thereof into an energy-saving mode and reset the entire I/O device again. The requirement that a controller should handle the energy management (PE management) for the entire I/O device, in parallel with the I/O management, has hitherto not been possible in conventional systems. The reason is that this requires a change in the assignment of the submodule to the controller. This necessitates a new configuration and parameterization of the submodules.